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It comes as both a surprise and not a surprise that the New South Wales (NSW) state government chose a "safe bet" of Lenovo and Microsoft to supply many thousands of taxpayer-funded laptops to secondary school students. Was Linux ever on the short list?

People don't care for freedom. Society is conditioned to give up their freedom for familiarity and convenience, and this particular government body is not different to the rest of society. This government made the familiar and convenient choice of Microsoft's non-free systems when it came to the decision of software systems. This government does not care for freedom.

It really doesn't matter that the software master in this case happens to be Microsoft; the master could be anybody else and the result will remain the same: users will give up their right to freedom. You will be doomed to lose your freedom when you don't value it. I will guarantee that the masters of non-free software will always have ways of making their software more attractive than free software. There is only one issue that these masters cannot compete with: it is the issue of freedom.